I often found myself searching for that one movie or TV show not currently available in my country. Whether it was on Netflix, Apple TV, HBO, or any other platform, the effort to pinpoint the precise country of streaming availability routinely became a burdensome task.
Realizing the need for a streamlined solution, I created one. Now you can effortlessly find your desired content and simplify your entertainment journey beyond borders.
Improvement ideas: let the user set their country. If I live in Germany, and I don't want to bother with VPN, knowing that a TV show is available in Argentina and 30 other countries is not important.
Also, I don't think this takes care of the case where some seasons of a show is available but not the others. Maybe that's also the reason for false negatives in some cases (others mentioned this).
Another thing: be able to search by subtitles and audio. In our household, we speak three languages, and I can't watch shows in 2 out of 3 with the standard location. It's also great for people learning languages (common VPN pitch).
Overall, great stuff!
The mobile view's information density is very low, I can see 1.7 tiles, so I always need to scroll.
Tapping on the tiles doesn't do anything apart from changing the background.
Some more preset selections would be nice like "Sitcom".
Recommendations based on the selected movie would be also great, for example when I'm watching HIMYM, I'd not mind seeing where Friends is available (it's basically the same jokes but a decade apart with different actors).
Really does seem to be the case. I just tried with The Omen and was given a list of countries. Next to the US was an ad to "Stream with NordVPN", suggesting that's the only way to view it here. However, I clicked the Hulu button, and it said US without the ad. Sure enough, I checked Hulu itself, and it's there—no VPN required.
The ad placement is confusing. Hopefully it's not intentional. JustWatch may not be as clean and may have ads of its own, but its entry for the same movie has zero confusion.
Along the same lines to your suggestion (thus, piggybacking): A filter based on principal language of the movie[s].
For example, if I want to discover new movies in German, Swedish, Norwegian, etc., I have to know the name, first, for the search operation; otherwise, I just movies with the term in the title (e.g.: Svenska returns Svenska tv-historier, Svenska fall, Svenska Hollywoodfruar, Barncancergalan - Det Svenska humorpriset, Svenska Truckers, and Svenska Powerkvinnor).
Which leads me to a suggestion, based on that:
If there's no steam available, don't return the result in the search[1]. The whole intent of the site to show "where to stream" but if there's no stream, returning a result with the message 'Sorry, we couldn't find any streaming information.' is a bit of a false positive -- in a "we have it but we don't" sense.
I use PotonVPN since a while and it works like a charm.
A note though, since some years now using a VPN is not really the panacea for streaming country restricted movies, as more and more the deciding factor is the originating country of your credit card.
That's an extremely valid piece of feedback and something I'm planning to spend more time clarifying on the platform so that people know how to navigate those and similar issues. There are cases where it's not only the credit card that's a deciding factor, but sometimes even the country from which you were creating your account (e.g. Prime Video).
If you only need a single country, nothing beats a tiny VPS company based there. The kind of place where setting the VPS up takes a few hours because an employee has to do it manually. Those companies are usually small enough to escape the notice of streaming giants.
A lot of streaming services have wised up to dynamic IP ranges and will kick you off pretty quick. I use a service with a dedicated residential IP in my target country and that’s worked flawlessly for over 5 years.
Or use GeoIP to assume a default country, but allow the user to change their country or clear the country filter. MaxMind has a free offline GeoIP database that’s good.
If the developer wants to keep the full country list, they could move the GeoIP identified country to the top of the list and/or highlight it for easy access.
At first, I thought you built a justwatch.com clone. But, after a quick inspection I realized you solve a related but different use-case where the user already paid for the streaming service holding the rights to the media, but not necessarily match the user’s country location.
By enabling the user to check in what countries the media is available you also unlock a new business model based on VPN affiliation programs (brilliant!) instead of streaming service affiliation programs like justwatch does. I wonder if both revenues models are complementary in the long run.
It’s nuts that watching media from another country for a streaming service I pay for is as easy as changing my IP to the desired country. Does it really work in this way?
Also, I hope you can provide some light on whether you are gaining any traction and unlocking vpn subcriptions revenue.
Suggestion: let the user select from what country it connects And/or automatically detect it. I’m in Europe and it’s confusing it offers me to stream from my own country using a vpn.
It's been a few years since I've used a VPN with streaming, but I recall some services not working well with it. I was in Australia with NordVPN to the US on a fibre connection.
Yea it all depends on if the service allows it. Netflix commonly showed me a “sorry you’re using a vpn so disable it” message and no amount of new sessions or incognito windows or exit nodes would fix it.
Perhaps this has changed since that time, but I imagine it’s more likely a pacification measure to streaming services to point to for rights holders and if it “accidentally breaks” all the time, they can point the blame at someone else and spend 6 weeks “fixing” it, only for it to “break” again a couple of weeks later. /tinfoil
> Netflix commonly showed me a “sorry you’re using a vpn
> Perhaps this has changed
It is an ongoing arms race. Sometimes the VPN providers are winning, sometimes the streaming services make a temporarily successful counter-offensive, sometimes the battleground is a mess with things working for some mixes of vpn/country/streamer but not others.⁰
The streaming services block the address ranges of known data-centres, though not commercial addresses more generally because there is often enough a cross-over between residential and commercial ISP accounts¹² so that is one workaround VPN providers can use in their choice of exit points (though bandwidth can be significantly more expensive that way than from a DC).
I'm not aware of it actually being done, but I'd not be surprised to find a less ethical VPN business hasn't tried to use their customers as a mesh and redirecting traffic around them as needed much like botnets use compromised hosts to forward requests. There are obvious technical difficulties here that make it a less practical idea³ but I can imagine someone trying it.
--
[0] Reference: I don't use a VPN this way myself, preferring the other major unlicensed media access route, bit I know a few people who do with varying levels of success over time.
[1] My home account is essentially a commercial one as that is the ISPs main customer base, I use them for a number of reasons (fixed IPv4 that I can run servers off, in fact a /29 of v4 addresses though that is a lot less important to me now than it was some years ago, native IPv6 which is still no commonplace here (though I still haven't set that up properly after all this time!), much better support when things fail, so I'm not the one spending time chasing BT OR, etc.)
[2] Similarly, many small offices actually run their access off what is targetted as a residential account. And small businesses based in/around a home are another grey area.
[3] In many places most residential users have significantly asymmetric bandwidth, throttling their ability to be used as a relay, and a mix of accounts from different countries looking to come from the same address might trip the streaming services' account anomaly detection heuristics.
There is also the very real part of life that exists in traveling. Especially if you live in Europe, you can find yourself in a different country with different media rights in less than an hour or two in a lot of cases. In those scenarios, it's important to not only manage the complexity of your own customers and the needs of the business as well.
Netflix never works for me ('title not available try another one or again later' or something, on everything). I'm not even using it to try to change my country, wish there was some other way to verify that. (Or better, that licencing was such that they just didn't care, and nobody would need to use one to change country anyway.)
Ironically the US is one of the worst countries to use as a streaming endpoint because so many of the primary rightsholders are based here, and only license content to their preferred network.
I used to pay for a service that only ran the Netflix country detection through a VPN, so we could switch countries easily. But Netflix cracked down on this service and VPNs about 5 years ago and it stopped working. Oh well.
> It’s nuts that watching media from another country for a streaming service I pay for is as easy as changing my IP to the desired country. Does it really work in this way?
Not anymore. Netflix will block your account if the same device jumps countries faster than is possible via normal travel. Also they block all the public VPNs.
From what I see this looks like an affiliate link farm for NordVPN.
Every single movie I tried shows up as being not available in my country with "Stream with NordVPN" slapped next to it. Even though they are available just fine.
Seems like the best way to monetize this. Doubt anyone will regularly pay for the website and banner ads are annoying. Buying a VPN is the logical next step if you find a movie in a different country, might be nice to have multiple affiliate links but this seems like a win-win, it makes it easier to get a VPN for someone who isn't too familiar and the creator earns a bit for their work.
I always wondered how does affiliate for such sites work? justwatch too has affiliate links to all streaming networks.
Do they sign up for affiliates for every available streaming network (which isn't possible as many don't have a program) or is there a syndicate affiliate network for this?
I am building an price aggregator for a category of products and its so hard to sign up for each of their affiliate individually and balance everyone's T&C.
Some VPNs don't work with Netflix, for example, though. I've never used Nord, so can't judge them, but there's definitely a difference between VPN providers when it comes to streaming support.
there was drop for year. A platform where you watch your fav shows, that remembers where you stopped watching, auto loading next episode, skip into, persistent subtitles and dub options.
All of those were winning them business from people who have money but no time.
But now if a friend recommends a show or movie to watch. In time it takes to figure out where can I watch it, subscribing etc. I could be already watching it from torrents.
I dont have to mentaly juggle subscribing and unsubscribing from platforms that make it extra difficult to cancell etc.
I think there was a slump for a while. Usenet has probably been going relatively strongly through it though, but it comes with a cost which means it's not a direct alternative to torrents with their seeding-and-ratio-based communities.
This is really neat. I hope you dont mind some feedback as I’ve used a few web apps like this in the past and have a fair idea of my own needs as a user that you may or may not find useful:
I think your app would really benefit from letting me pick the country upfront (I.e. in the header). After this it would be useful to see the streaming options as soon as I’ve selected a movie or tv show with one-click, and with the free options at the top of the list.
Beyond that, it would be nice if you could link me directly to the streaming site’s player page so that I can begin watching right away.
Another really neat use for this would be an app for Android TV/Roku/Apple TV that lets me browse and link directly to content. They all have their own implementations of this but they’re pretty inconsistent when it comes to gaps in supported services.
It's funny, with all the saturation of streaming services and despite having more disposable income than ever before, I actually largely went back to what I did as a teenager - piracy. I don't have a problem paying for things, but I'd really like to actually own what I pay for, too. So if I can buy a film, I will, and store it on my portable SSD, and if I can't, I'll pirate it. But I'm not willing to pay rent fees to 5 different places and own nothing in the end.
Bit of immediate feedback - United Kingdom is out of alphabetical order, presumably because it's filed under Great Britain or GB. People from the UK always go for United Kingdom, so keep the label but update the sorting.
Edit: also, personal preference, but I really don't like it when there isn't a space on the page where my mouse isn't triggering some kind of rollover, in this case between the movie patches. I may be in the minority on that though.
Suggestion: don't lose search strings. Example: in the search box type "Panda" -- a modal window pops up with 6 matches. Which one do I want? I click one. It fills the window. Nope, that is not the one. So I click the Back button-- and the search box is empty. I have to type "Panda" again. That is annoying.
Probably you should just repaint the main window, with the search string intact but showing only the matching selection of titles. Then one could alt-click to open a title in a separate window or tab, and not lose the search.
Another suggestion related to search: please implement a URL route to initiate a search. I would like to define a search template to easily start a search from LaunchBar. Something like https://whereto.stream/search?q=*
It is funny how pirating is still by far the most convenient method of them all. Streaming services is becoming much like cable tv was and the various tiers of service. I simply use Yandex.com and type "x" movie stream and then can watch anything I want at a moments notice. I tried to pay for netflix and currently still have amazon prime but netflix stopped allowing my kids to use the account at their moms house so canceled. I just taught my kids how to stream free movies instead.
Why does it claim that mad max 2 is streamable on hbo in denmark? Decided to watch the trilogy this weekend and had a laugh that only the first and the third was available here
- Let me select a streaming service and get an A-Z listing of all available titles
- Show me if shows are censored/modified in any way or missing episodes
- Show me if shows are included with the price of subscription or if you have to pay more on top of what you're already paying (a huge problem with amazon)
To better understand your use case, I'm wondering how you would like to navigate an A-Z list. Is there a specific reason for a full list, or would you rather be able to search and display only content that is available on your service selection?
Personally I like A-Z listings to browse. I don't always know what is available and I don't want to have to depend on someone else to show me a small subset of options based on what they want me to see or even what they think I want to see (recommendations). If I'm paying for a service I want to see all the options that I'm getting in exchange for my money and then I will choose for myself what I want to watch.
An A-Z listing of all titles is something people have been asking Netflix for since day one, but they refuse to provide it. It's partly now because they are embarrassed about the quality/quantity of what they offer. That's not all though. They want to decide what you will watch. They want to be able to promote certain content over other content. This is why you see the same titles over and over again in multiple categories. They don't want their new shows to have to compete for views with all of their older shows so they basically hide most of their catalog behind a search box. It's easier for Netflix when subscribers watch their new/promoted content right away. It makes it faster for them to figure out how audiences like their new content. It helps them maximize ad spending and control/manage social media conversations about their new shows. They have their reasons for inconveniencing us, I just don't care about them.
Every once in a while I'll go into Netflix and search for randomish three letter combinations then scroll through what they have. Eventually, as you keep scrolling, they start ignoring what you searched for and just shove whatever they are promoting in the list. It takes ages, but every time I do it, I never fail to find things I'm interested in but had no idea were on the platform because netflix wouldn't show them to me.
That's very good insight. Thank you for taking the time to provide your input, I really appreciate it. We'll do our best to continuously improve the product, and this is definitely enticing enough to keep track of and consider implementing in the future.
I want to be able to select 'I have Hulu, Netflix, Apple+, Amazon' and get an A-Z list of every movie/series I have access to, and then be able to filter that using tags or categories. I don't ever want to see stuff that I'd have to pay extra for, like Hulu if I decide to pay extra for Showtime, or Amazon if I decide to pay an extra $5 to rent it.
Justwatch’s UI has gotten a ton worse recently, I assume to make it more likely for people to click sponsored links. It’s getting really hard to use. Last time I used it it was bad enough I thought “hm, this has achieved enshittification, time to look for an alternative…”
Doesn’t matter too much as this coincides with the streaming services dying too. Netflix has just decided to force adverts on me, so that’s been cancelled.
This is nice! At first I thought it was wheel-reinvented https://justwatch.com, but unlike that site, this one shows you which services in each country have the content you're looking for, so that you can watch whatever you want, simply by traveling internationally, or by using a VPN.
Love it! A possible addition could be storing the user's subscribed TV services and region in local storage in order to bias the returned search results. Additionally, on the results page, take the user's region and display icons for each service that they can stream or purchase from without them needing to click through!
The first film that pops up for me, “Oppenheimer,” is shown as available on Netflix in the United States. I believe it is exclusive to the Peacock streaming service in the U.S.
How did this happen? Do you have a mixture of manually maintained data and data pulled from APIs like The Movie Database (TMDB) or IMDB?
The reason "United States" appears under the Netflix selection for "Oppenheimer" is solely to indicate that you can still watch it from the US if you're using a VPN (in this case, we're featuring NordVPN since we can offer a discount for their services). However, I do agree that we need a clearer way to communicate from the start that "United States" (in this case) is included only with additional VPN support.
Man, there are a whole bunch of sites that cover the Netherlands, but they always seem to be out of date or dog slow to the point of timeouts and ad-laden.
This is fast and accurate - just type it in and boom. Why can't the web be more of this? Made for people, you know?
> Realizing the need for a streamlined solution, I created one. Now you can effortlessly find your desired content and simplify your entertainment journey beyond borders.
Same here, but over year ago I just switched to private torrents.
I am done with platforms throwing obstacles for me to navigate in order to watch a show. Those companies can compete with torrents. Early netflix and HBO were winning subscriptions from torrent users. Because it was more convenient. Now they started fighting each other at cost of convenience - my convinience - so fuck you until you fix your service.
I definitely understand your struggle, which is why I created whereto.stream. We hope to find even more effective ways to help people stream or at least understand how to navigate these and similar obstacles that are preventing them from doing so.
I also thought, "Justwatch clone" but, it's much nicer, even aside from the international info. Justwatch is so cumbersome. Yours is fast and clean.
I note that, testing around, I asked for The Brokenwood Mysteries, a show I am currently watching on Acorn. Whereto said there were no streaming opportunities. Oops.
Also worth noting, Justwatch couldn't find it at all so, win!?
Really appreciate the kind words! And yes, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement when it comes to displaying the correct information, which is one of the top priorities moving forward.
I just tested it with The Rookie. Why is the country list not sorted alphabetically? And why does it show for Germany, that I need NordVPN? Are you sponsored? Because it IS available on Netflix Germany. Last, only season 1-4 is available, not season 5-6. This is important information left out.
No, TMDB doesn't have deeplinks to the providers, but based on the requests the site is doing it's most likely https://www.movieofthenight.com/about/api as it's hotlinking the provider icons from there.
This looks pretty incomplete. I searched for "Da Vinci's Inquest," an old CBC program, and it didn't turn up any streams even though PlutoTV say they offer it. Bukow und König, a German show that's available on MhZ Choice, doesn't even appear in the title search.
I was about to start building something similar but a bit different use case (maybe you can add it to your app?): if the tv show is not available in my country, I want to be able to set an email alert and get an email notification when it becomes available.
I think making it a notification via the app (just like Facebook notification) will be better than email notifications (email notifications would be costly when so so bulky).
I’m exploring as I write this. In the age of VPNs, one could pass some filtering query and get cheapest to buy/rent, include/exclude countries, include/exclude platforms, and finally,… metacritic, steamDB, IMDb, RottenTomato. Is this in the works, already done?
Nice! I tested a bit, the UI is clean and better than justwatch. Searched for a couple of movies and they are available. Congrats on the launch and thank you for sharing this with us. I will share my feedback and feature requests after using it more.
congrats on the shipping. this is a surprisingly tricky problem to solve.
feedback :
a- john wick is available india via lionsgate subscription in prime; while the app show only rent option. this basically means improving the scraper and channel identification in prime
b- i usually google the movie i intend to watch by appending the keyword watch. for instance, john wick watch
this works most of the time, except in cases when a particular was available on a streaming service when google scraped the page, but has since moved to a different service. if you can somehow solve for this then you'll have an edge.
Suggestion: in addition to the ability to select the "home" country, add an option to select the VPN provider I'm using so that it further filters to only show the countries where the provider has a server.
Features I would like: a country filter and a way to select which streaming services I have access to. And if I search for something show that it is not available with my filters.
I've seen this request/idea pop up more than a few times now, so I'm jotting it down as one of the features we'll consider implementing sooner rather than later.
Thank you for your feedback!
i guess there are not a lot of public apis provided by streaming providers like netflix which makes your service very unreliable. I am from austria and for rebel moon part 2, which is a netflix exclusive, no available streaming providers are listed.
This will be a primary focus moving forward — improving the reliability of displayed information. We're currently working with an API that doesn't come from any official streaming providers, which, as you mentioned, generally do not offer such support.
Stremio works with plugins. There's certain plugins that are able to fetch contents directly from torrent downloads, so the typical warnings about torrenting apply there (not to receive an undesired letter on the mailbox).
However, that same plugin is able to use some paid for services that download the torrents for you, which is safe(r).
IMO if subtitles aren't needed, it does pass the wife test once it's all configured. Subs wouldn't pass it though; it's common having to fiddle with sync settings to fix them. Chromecast casting definitely doesn't pass the test either: it is finicky, it resets the connection completely for each change (like seeking or changing subs), and it very frequently ends up erroring out with issues.
Ah, so realistically it's only likely to be a good UX when combined with a paid download service. I think I know which one you're referring to (at least, I only know of one such service, which I learned about from Reddit).
I have an Amazon Fire Stick, which works flawlessly with Plex across my local network, so hopefully Stremio works as well on it too.
It passes the wife test with certain add-ons. The good thing is once you configure it on PC with add-ons, settings persist over TV, mobile and Mac apps.
If you're going to sell people a VPN so that they can watch something, at least make sure that the suggestions are correct.
Oppenheimer is listed as being available in the United Kingdom on Netflix - and suggests that I sign up for NordVPN to access it. I'm already in the UK, so wouldn't need to do that.
Oh wait, it's not on Netflix in the UK - it's on Now (which is also listed to be fair).
Just use justwatch in the UK. It shows Oppenheimer as available on Now TV via subscription. Main difference is they directly work with service providers unlike this amateur hour.
https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/oppenheimer
Getting accurate info and do the research so you know local streaming landscape should be the first step. Creating simple UI and web app is the last step in projects like this.
Maybe they fixed it in the 3 minutes since you commented, but it's not telling me Oppenheimer is available on UK Netflix, only to buy on Amazon (which seems correct - I'm in the UK and Amazon is showing me a Buy button)
Not exactly sure what you're referring to. If it's the legality of using a VPN to access streaming content, it varies by location and the terms of service of the streaming platforms.
The streaming provider does not have the right to show you the movie in your country. So if you're using a VPN to stream I guess both you and them are guilty of copyright infringement, which is a crime more heinous than murder.
Just torrent the movie then, it's cheaper and more convenient again.
Great app, I will use this. But this is it. This is the last step. Streaming services have ads already. Now we just need one more service which packages these streaming channels together. This actually has a good opportunity to be in front of that if we could somehow watch different streaming content without leaving the app. Get customers locked in, and partner with providers for share in subscription.
Also, I don't think this takes care of the case where some seasons of a show is available but not the others. Maybe that's also the reason for false negatives in some cases (others mentioned this).
Another thing: be able to search by subtitles and audio. In our household, we speak three languages, and I can't watch shows in 2 out of 3 with the standard location. It's also great for people learning languages (common VPN pitch).
Overall, great stuff! The mobile view's information density is very low, I can see 1.7 tiles, so I always need to scroll.
Tapping on the tiles doesn't do anything apart from changing the background.
Some more preset selections would be nice like "Sitcom".
Recommendations based on the selected movie would be also great, for example when I'm watching HIMYM, I'd not mind seeing where Friends is available (it's basically the same jokes but a decade apart with different actors).